love to say a proper goodbye to you.
Me: YES!
He sends me a dancing-man emoji with his phone number, so I reply with a dancing-woman emoji and my number, along with the following message:
Me: If you’re a night owl, maybe we could watch This Is the End together on Zoom tonight? It’s one of my all-time favorites.
Fish: OMFG! Calling you now.
Even as I’m reading his message, my phone rings with an incoming call from an unknown number—and when I quickly compare the number to the one Fish just gave me, it’s a match.
“Alessandra’s Pizzeria,” I say in greeting.
“Hello, yes, I’ll take twenty large cheese pizzas. Hold the cheese. Hold the sauce. Extra crust.”
I laugh. “So, you want a Frisbee, then?”
“No, I want twenty.”
We both laugh.
“I know you have to go, but I had to call real quick,” Fish says. “I had to tell you I love This Is the End more than I love taking air into my lungs!”
I giggle. “Me, too!”
“Dude! That movie, more than any other, is a litmus test for me. If people hate that one, then I hate them.”
“Amen. My other litmus test movie is The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.”
“I love that one, too!”
“Oh, thank God. What a pity if I had to hate you. Isn’t that movie the best?”
“The best. Second only to This Is the End.”
And we’re off. Talking about our favorite scenes from both movies in a rapid-fire back and forth that makes me feel like we’re right back at the party last night. Like our hands are clasped and all’s right with the world.
But, crap, mid-sentence about Rihanna slapping the shit out of Michael Cera in This Is the End, I’m interrupted by a knock on my door.
“Ally?” Mom says. She pokes her head into my room. “Are you coming? Dinner is ready.”
I point at the phone against my ear and raise my index finger, and, thankfully, she quietly dips out of the room.
“That was my mom,” I say as the door closes. “I promised her we’d have dinner and design floral arrangements tonight.”
“Oh, yeah. You said your mom’s a florist.”
“I’m surprised you remember that.”
“I remember everything you said.”
My heart skips a beat. “One of our favorite things to do together has always been designing flowers for her wedding clients.”
“That sounds fun.”
“It is. Besides the obvious considerations—color and shape and scent, et cetera—there’s a whole language of flowers, dating back to Victorian times, that’s super fun to decode and send secret messages with.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah. Back when people couldn’t say what was on their minds, they’d send flowers to say it for them.”
“Give me an example.”
“Well, a really obvious one is roses. If you give someone a bouquet of yellow roses, for instance, that means friendship. But if you send red ones, you’re making it clear you’re interested in a red-hot romance.”
“Hubba-hubba.”
I laugh. “There are lots more examples than that, but that’s a little taste.”
“Very cool. Huh. You learn something new every day.”
“When I was a kid, I was obsessed with flowers and their meanings. I used to pretend I was a lady in Victorian times, fending off my suitors, all of whom were romancing me with an endless barrage of flower bouquets.”
He chuckles. “What are your favorite flowers?”
“It depends on my mood. I do love roses. They smell so good. Lilies, too. Peonies. Like I said, it depends on my mood. The occasion. The season.”
“Ally!” Mom calls from the kitchen.
“Shoot, I have to go. My mom goes to bed around ten. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
“Go. The sooner we hang up, the sooner we can start our second date.”
I feel like I’m going to pass out from excitement. Our second date? “Okay, well, bye, Fish. Matthew.”
“Bye, Little Lioness. Can’t wait to see you later.”
We disconnect the call and, even though I know my mother is waiting for me, I nonetheless sit for a long moment on my bed, replaying the highlights of our conversation, over and over again, in my head. Finally, though, when the smell of Mom’s dinner lures me, I get up and jeté across my room like I used to do as a kid in ballet class, feeling like last night’s heartache is already a distant memory.
Twelve
Fish
I yawn and force my eyelids open. I know I should have let Alessandra hang up from our video chat two hours ago, right after our movie ended, to let her get some sleep before her early morning flight. But I’ve been having too much fun with her to do the selfless thing.
I